The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Steven, a charismatic surgeon, is forced to make an
unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the
behavior of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister.
Director:
Yorgos LanthimosStars:
Language:
EnglishRelease Date:
3 November 2017 (UK) See more »Also Known As:
Egy szent szarvas meggyilkolása See more »Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1Did You Know?
Quotes
Martin: I wanted to say one more thing, I'm really sorry about Bob.Steven Murphy: It's nothing serious.
Martin: No, it is. They will all get sick and die. Bob will die, Kim will die, your wife will die, understand?
Steven Murphy: No, I don't.
See more »
Connections
Referenced in The Graham Norton Show: Nicole Kidman/Keith Urban/Alan Cumming/Sheryl Crow (2017)
A man who plays God for a living meets a boy who chooses to play Devil in Yorgos Lanthimos’ chilling and breathtaking “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” Once again, as he did with “The Lobster,”
Lanthimos is working in a deeply metaphorical register, using an
impossible situation to illuminate relatable human fears. The result is a
mesmerizing thriller, a movie that asks questions with no good answers
and traps us within its terrifying and bizarre situation with little
hope for a happy ending. With uniformly great performances throughout
the cast and Lanthimos’ stunning eye for detail and composition, this is
one of the most unforgettable films of the year.
From the beginning,
something seems vaguely off with the relationship between Steven and
Martin. The doctor introduces him as a friend of his daughter’s, but
he’s not. And he buys the kid presents, even inviting him over for
dinner. Martin becomes friends with Steven’s kids, and a romantic
interest for Kim, but there’s a dark undercurrent here from frame one.
Something’s just not quite right in the Murphy household, and it’s not
only that the good doctor likes his wife to pretend to be under general
anesthesia when he has sex with her. The Murphys seem to be just a
little off, and Martin more than a little.
Then Bob can’t get out
of bed. His legs don’t work. Not long after, he stops eating. Martin
tells Steven what’s going on. It’s justice. Steven took his father, and
now a member of his family must die. The scales must be balanced. Steven
can choose to kill one of his family members and end the nightmare, but
they will continue to lose the use of their limbs, refuse to eat, and
eventually bleed from the eyes if he does not make a decision. Steven,
being a man of science, turns to medicine to explain what’s happening to
his family, refusing to believe that it’s some sort of cosmic karma
coming to get him. Thematically, Lanthimos is playing with the
differences between science and the supernatural. Steven plays God. He
saves lives and he makes mistakes that take lives. And he sees the world
in that kind of black and white. Martin breaks down his perfectly
controlled worldview, and demands something rarely asked of the gods,
personal sacrifice.
Working with his regular cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis
again, and a multi-talented team of designers, Lanthimos delivers one
of the most visually striking films of the year, a movie that recalls
prime Polanski in its claustrophobic tension but more distinctly feels
like an entirely new voice in horror. “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”
takes place in a world of clean lines and kitchens as antiseptic as
operating rooms. It's this world of suburban perfection that Martin, and
Lanthimos, deconstructs with a waking nightmare. There’s something
about the cool, detached world of “Sacred Deer” that makes it all the
more terrifying. Of course, fallible man must be punished in a world
this perfectly refined and lacking in common humanity. It almost feels
like Martin gives Steven an out early in the film, inviting him to his
more “everyday” world in which they watch “Groundhog Day” (tellingly, another movie about a man who must learn a lesson to stop a physically impossible situation) and his mother (Alicia Silverstone) demands he try her tart. But the God won’t deign to play with the mortals, and so he must be hurled from his throne.
And
here’s where we get to the title. Late in the film, we learn that one
of the characters wrote an A+ essay on Iphigenia, a Greek myth that
centers on the killing of a sacred deer by Greek leader Agamemnon.
Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, punished Agamemnon, and the only way
to remove the punishment is for the leader to sacrifice his daughter,
Iphigenia. Is the modern surgeon the equivalent of Agamemnon? Is the
child who lost his father before he could talk about puberty with him
Artemis? Lanthimos never draws straight lines, but the parallel is
illuminating. He makes films designed to start conversations, to leave
viewers startled and shaken. And he’s smart enough to use Greek myths,
pitch black humor, and chilling horror in equal amounts.
It
helps that he’s clearly at a point in his career where the right actors
want to work with him. It feels like we’re finally at a time when we can
recognize that Colin Farrell has been pretty great for a long time,
choosing to work with challenging directors who bring out different
edges of his ability even this late into his career. He’s phenomenal
here, finding the shades of a man whose greatest sin may be his refusal
to admit he’s only human. In the end, that may be the message of “The
Killing of a Sacred Deer”—when you play God, you must deal with the
consequences. The Lanthimos-Farrell dynamic is one of those
relationships in which the creator and actor are so clearly on the same
page that it’s invigorating.
That’s a good word for “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” It’s a film
that challenges viewers in such fascinating ways and feels so refined in
its filmmaking that it’s invigorating to watch. It’s a rare movie
indeed that can be this alternately terrifying, hysterical, strange, and
heartbreaking, often in the same scene. Like the Greek myth that
inspired the film, it feels powerful enough to be timeless.
This review was originally filed on September 10, 2017 from the Toronto International Film Festival.
FINAL RATING 8/10 for the genre and 8/10 overall. A fantastic and intense movie.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment